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"Following on the 2015 release of Mozart’s Requiem, Masaaki Suzuki and his Bach Collegium Japan has gone on to record the composers Mass in C minor, K427 – the ‘Great Mass’. As the nickname indicates it is a work of unusual proportions for a mass of the Classical period. ....

"One fine morning in the summer of 1904 a van drew up at our door and from it emerged Arnold Dolmetsch and a harpsichord. He had previously asked me to play in Bach’s Double Concerto in C major with Miss [Kathleen] Salmon at one of his concerts in Clifford’s Inn. As I had no knowledge of the harpsichord, it was a case of “fools rushing in”. However, all went well at the concert as far as the ensemble was concerned, and the result was that it fired me with a desire to possess an instrument of my own.

Thus Nellie Chaplin opens a fascinating article, “The harpsichord”, which she wrote in 1922 for the journal Music and Letters (3: 3, July 1922, pp. 269–73), describing her first encounter with the harpsichord and her subsequent commitment to exploring both music and dance of the pre-Classical period. ...

"The principal attraction on this occasion was Haydn’s intermezzo, La canterina (The singer) which Classical Opera have recently performed at the Eisenstadt Haydn Festival.

Opera is not the first genre that comes to mind in connection with Haydn, but the composer wrote (according to Grove) thirty dramatic works for the stage, most of which date from the period when he was in the employ of the Princes Esterházy ...

"A Cambridge academic believes he has discovered Thomas Becket’s personal book of psalms, an ancient manuscript the martyred saint and so-called “turbulent priest” may have been holding when he was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170. ...

"Neville Marriner, the British violinist-turned-conductor who founded the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and built it into one of the most popular and widely recorded chamber orchestras in the world, died Oct. 2. He was 92.

The academy announced the death in a statement on its website. No other details were immediately available. ...

"Choosing a different path from the more conventionally traveled road is a matter of pride for many musicians and listeners who are deeply involved in early music. Particularly during the early days of the revival, those who were attracted to the more transparent sound of gut-strung fiddles were dismissed by the mainstream as non-serious musicians, and modern masters even claimed that the artistic potential of J.S. Bach's works for solo violin could not possibly have been correctly realized until said masters arrived on the scene with their more highly evolved instruments, reliable strings, and 19th-century technique. ...

"The pieces recorded here have been played on a peculiar instrument, which was quite widespread in the second half of the 18th century: the tangent piano (Tangentenflügel). It is a piano whose strings are struck by wooden slips without any soft coverings. In place of the rotating motion of the common piano’s hammers, the Tangent piano has strikers that move perpendicularly to the strings like a harpsichord jacks. ...

To celebrate 20 years of 19th century dances here in Rome, under the expert guidance of Maestro Paolo Di Segni, we will welcome you at the Auditorium delle Fornaci, just off St. Peter’s square.

The musicians of the Orchestra del Teatro della Memoria will accompany our steps, with their usual flair and good humor: the Maestri, we know from experience, are quite ready to join us on the dance floor! ...

"In October 2014, the Oxford Lieder Festival - under its imaginative and intrepid founder, Sholto Kynoch - fulfilled an incredibly ambitious goal: to perform Schubert’s entire corpus of songs - more than 600 - and, for three marvellous weeks, to bring Vienna to Oxford. ‘The Schubert Project’ was a magnificent celebration of the life and music of Franz Schubert: at its core lay the first complete performance of Schubert’s songs - including variants and alternative versions - in the UK....

CALL FOR PROPOSALS

The 6th annual meeting of the Historical Keyboard Society of North America (HKSNA) will be held from Wednesday, April 26 to Saturday, April 29, 2017 in Greenville, South Carolina. The meeting’s theme, "From the Old World to the New," aims to encourage the study of keyboard music and keyboard making in England and the Americas from 1700–1850. Selected instruments from the Carolina Clavier Collection will be featured in this meeting. ...

"We are emailing you today to tell you about some changes to the way we sell our digital downoads. You may have noticed that our downloads are no longer available from www.thesixteendigital.com,this is because we have moved them to our main website where we can sell them alongside our CDs. ...

"A three day event with focus on Dance, music and opera in the Europe of Enlightenment

Hosted in some of the most fascinating historical buildings in the city of Naples (Teatro di San Carlo, Palazzo Zevallos Stigliano, Chiesa di Santa Caterina da Siena) the international conference Il mondo di Gennaro Magri: Danza, musica e opera a Napoli, nell’Europa dei Lumi will take place from October 6 to 8, centering on the figure of the famous choreographer active during the 18th century as maître de ballet at Teatro di San Carlo in Naples and author of Trattato teorico-pratico di ballo (Napoli 1779). ...

"This hour on Harmonia, we continue our 3-part celebration of the British-based viol consort Fretwork. In honor of its thirtieth anniversary, we’re exploring Fretwork’s experiences with 500 or so years of rich repertory, ripe for viols. Our featured release, only slightly ironically, is John Jenkins: Six-Part Consorts, performed by Phantasm. ...

"Shortly after moving in to her new home, Mottisfont Abbey, the indomitable Maud Russell noted in her engagement book:

April 4 1935. Take boys to Londonderry House to hear Mrs Woodhouse.

Maud, a wealthy heiress, was married to Major Gilbert Russell, a banker and cousin of the Duke of Bedford. They purchased the entire estate of Mottisfont in 1934. They also maintained a London address, as was traditional for the upper classes at the time, enabling them to partake fully in fashionable artistic and political circles.

Raymond Russell (1922-1964), their youngest son, was 13 at the time of this entry and just about to start at Eton College, Windsor. A trip to hear Violet Gordon-Woodhouse, Britain’s foremost exponent of the harpsichord and clavichord at the time, would have undoubtedly been a memorable and inspirational experience for this musical and intense child. ...

"For the first time, we are presenting two large-scale concerts in one season! Which is why we need your help to make it a success.

Join us for our second annual Fall Fundraiser! This exclusive fundraising party will feature a performance by TEMP artists in the lovely and intimate setting of theWally Workman Art Gallery. Come and enjoy light hors d'oeuvres from Whole Foods Market and help conquer our big plans! ...

"The second release on Globe Music, the new label from Shakespeare’s Globe, is a selection of period music from the Globe’s 2012 – 2014 Broadway and West End productions of Twelfth Night and Richard III featuring the Musicians of Shakespeare’s Globe playing pieces by Morley, Holborne, Dowland, Gibbons, Mundy and others, arranged by Claire van Kampen."

Outhere Music is celebrating the Baroque by offering 25% off a special selection of French Baroque masters albums of Couperin, Marais and Rameau between the dates of 27 September and 27 October 2016.

"An independent musical production and recording group, Outhere Music distributes its recordings all over the world - approximately a hundred per year, ranging from early to contemporary music, by way of jazz and world music -, in physical form as well as digital. ..."

"... Nevertheless, as players of stringed instruments possessing a more compact range, we find it necessary to understand and manage polyphonic music, even when it’s not entirely clear from the notation that polyphony is intended. This case applies to the better sort of music from the late 15th century through the 18th century: Nearly every instance of what appears to be a long monophonic string of notes has a latent or implied polyphonic character, and it is up to the performer to identify and realize it as such. ...

The Gramophone Classical Music Awards 2016 are out! Here are the early music awards ...

... The winners of the 12 recording category Awards were also presented with their prizes during the ceremony. Andrew Parrott accepted the Early Music Award from Classic FM presenter Catherine Bott for the Taverner Consort & Players' recording 'Western Wind'. The conductor Paul Agnew received the Baroque Vocal Award for his recording, with Les Arts Florissants, of Volume 1 in their Monteverdi madrigals series. The other Baroque repertoire Award, Baroque Instrumental, was won by Rachel Podger for her recording of Biber's Rosary Sonatas on Channel Classics. ...

'Mozart and the Weber Sisters' won this year's Recital category and the conductor of that album – Raphaël Pichon – was there to collect the Award on behalf of the ensemble Pygmalion and the soprano – and Pichon's wife – Sabine Devieilhe. " ...

News from the Nota Bene Baroque Players (NBBP) of plans for their upcoming 15th Anniversary 2016-2017 Concert Season. For the 2016-2017 season, the NBBP has opted for a cooperative artistic programming model guided by its "Creative Directors": Julie Baumgartel, Andrew Chung, Rona Goldensher and Joseph Lanza for its 5 orchestral/ensemble concert line-ups. Howard Dyck, conductor, completes the season with an Easter concert event with the NBBPlayers and NBBSingers in April of 2017.

The season début occurs on 18 September, at The Registry Theatre (Kitchener - Region of Waterloo, 3:00PM) under the title of "Fourplay" where are featured the four members of the creative directors, all Baroque violinists. ...

"September 18 in Wroclaw, the 51st International Festival Wratislavia Cantans will host Sir John Eliot Gardiner. That evening maestro will lead the final concert of the festival.

It seems difficult to find two compositions more divergent than St. John Passion and St. Matthew Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach. The first one is an action-packed drama, almost demanding a stage for performance. The latter is a contemplative piece, adding a lyrical commentary to each fragment of the Gospel story: thoughtful inner voices of indefinite characters, who try to somehow cope with what they had witnessed. We later recognize that these contemplations and unobtrusive answers reflect our own thoughts, and that we are drawn right into Matthew’s story, almost imperceptibly. If St. John Passion turns us into agitated spectators, St. Matthew Passion sees us as ...

"The results obtained with this study aspire to dispel some misconceptions rooted in time, showing that the revival of the nineteenth century instrumental music in Italy is due to the cello School of Naples, thanks to the founder, Gaetano Ciandelli, his pupils Salvatore Pappalardo and Paolo Rotondo , and Isidoro Boubèe. ...

"... For a start, we’re very pleased to announce that we’ve again been able to lengthen the Festival by a further two days, so that it is now back to the same 9-day format as the old Lufthansa Festival. ... Secondly, we thought you would like to know something about our new Festival theme, which has been inspired by the 450th anniversary of the birth of Monteverdi on the one hand, and the 250th anniversary of the death of Telemann on the other. Since these events occurred at the opposite extremes of the Baroque period and both composers could be said to have had one creative foot outside the Baroque – back in the Renaissance period in Monteverdi’s case, forward into the Classical period in Telemann’s – we’ve decided to reflect this in our programming, and to entitle our theme Baroque at the Edge. ...

"Haydn: The Complete Early Divertimenti - 50% Discount ... This bundle has been around before, but that was more than 2 years ago, and there are many new members of the eClassical extending family, so I thought ...

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